October 2014

Interviews/Profiles

October 15, 2011

NOTE: On Friday, Oct. 14, SAJA & the Columbia Journalism School hosted Imran Khan, Pakistani politician, cricket legend, Chancellor of the University of Bradford (UK) and author of a new book, "Pakistan: A Personal History," in conversation with TIME's Bobby Ghosh. This is one of several SAJAforum reports on the event.

By Hiten Samtani (@HitSamty), a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Additional reporting by Suhrith Parthasarathy (@suhrith) and photographs by Purvi Thacker (@purvi21), both of Columbia J-School.

Cricket legend and Pakistani prime minister hopeful Imran Khan spoke about his party's vision for Pakistan, the country's need for rule of law, and the implications of the War on Terror to a standing room only crowd at the Columbia Journalism School on Friday evening. In conversation with Bobby Ghosh, World Editor of TIME, Khan showcased his trademark swagger and charisma, but sidestepped tough questions in what was a crowd-pleasing but ultimately unfulfilling talk.

Ghosh gave the audience a lesson on how to do a refreshing introduction of a public figure; he mentioned Khan’s book, “Pakistan: A Personal History,” and said he felt “a twinge of sadness” that he could no longer see Khan as simply the heroic sporting icon of his youth. Ghosh asked Khan about a statement in the book in which Khan says that he could always see an opponent in his grasp on the field, and that he had now begun to feel the same way about politics. “The opponents are on the mat and they won’t be able to get up,” said Khan, with a touch of arrogance and his familiar thrusting palm gesture. “The public wants change and they want PTI,” he said, referring to the upcoming elections and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

Khan said he wrote “Pakistan: A Personal History” for the youth of the country. “Never have I seen them so confused, about secularism, Islam, etc., ” he said. “There needs to be a direction.” Khan drew zealous applause from the crowd when he said that the one positive thing Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had done is that “he had exposed all the political forces in the country, by buying them.” Khan hailed the vibrant independent media in Pakistan as vital to promoting Pakistani interests, rather than those of the politicians. When Ghosh asked him about the Arab Spring and why there was no parallel in Pakistan, Khan said that the 2007 “Lawyers’ Movement was the Pakistani version of the Arab Spring, but it was hijacked.”

The discussion moved on to the U.S.-led "War on Terror," a phenomenon that Khan said was the other reason he wrote the book. Khan--in a statement that will likely thrill Republicans--said “people don’t use guns just because they carry guns,” referring to the “million armed men from the tribal areas. You win the war when you win the people’s hearts and minds,” he said. “The Pakistani government should have asked the men from the tribal areas to isolate al-Qaida right in the beginning.” Instead, Khan said, “Musharraf made a blunder; under pressure from America, he sent the army into the tribal areas in 2004.” This was, Khan said, “an insane and immoral way to war, with artillery, F-16s, and helicopter gunships bombing villages. As a result, thousands have died, more than 3.5 million have been internally displaced, and the economy has lost $70 billion, compared to the $15 billion in foreign aid we received.” He also said that these were the reasons why “80 percent of Pakistanis perceive the U.S. as a bigger enemy than India.”

Khan took a stand against U.S. aid to Pakistan, saying, “if you do not respect yourself, no one will respect you.” He insisted that the Pakistani economy was “not poor, just mismanaged,” and drew a comparison to the election patterns in the country, stating that “35 million people were unregistered to vote, and 37 million votes out of the total 80 million cast were bogus.” He promised that his party would root out this type of corruption and establish a robust and independent justice system.

The talk was organized by the South Asian Journalists Association, and Khan’s cricketing and philanthropic appeal had drawn a large number of Indians. The conversation moved towards India-Pakistan relations. “Does India represent an existential threat?” Ghosh asked, and Khan said, “No. But it’s in the military genes, and hence the army has played a disproportionate role.” Khan said that relations between the two countries would remain fragile “unless we are confident that our intelligence agencies will not play a part in cross-border violence. One act like Mumbai will bring us back to square one.” When asked how India and Pakistan--countries that began in such similar circumstances--had taken such different trajectories, Khan said “Jawaharlal Nehru embedded democracy in India, while we (Pakistan) lost our only great leader (Mohammad Ali Jinnah).” Khan also referred to the East Pakistan crisis (which led to the eventual creation of Bangladesh in 1971) and cited these incidents as reasons why “our democracy never took off.” When asked by an audience member about Track II diplomacy and the difficulty of cross-border travel, Khan diverted the conversation to a more entertaining but less difficult answer about a cricket series in 2005.

Khan was then asked about whether he would repeal the blasphemy law, which erupted into controversy following the January 2011 assassination of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, who spoke out against abuse of the law. “I was the only politician to side with Taseer,” Khan said. He then went on to give a history of the blasphemy law, and condemned the death of rational dialogue in Pakistan. But he did not definitively answer the question of whether he would repeal the law.

When asked about politics, religion, and the rural people of Pakistan, Khan said that people in rural areas tend to be more politicized, because their “lives depend on it. But they were petrified that they’d be on the wrong side, and so they would go with the powerful criminals.”

In the most insightful exchange of the night, Khan said that rural people do not think about the secularism issue, and that it was a topic more often heard “at dinner parties in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi." In response to an audience member’s question about extremism in the tribal areas, Khan said that collateral damage from this war is what created the Pakistani Taliban. “If someone killed my family, I could become a suicide bomber,” he declared. He assured the audience that a robust rule of law would be a core mandate of his party’s time in office, but did not offer any specific policies towards this goal, other than insisting that the War on Terror had to end.

There were the inevitable questions about cricket, notably about the spot-fixing scandal. Khan fielded these with aplomb, and obliged a few of the swarm of supporters eager for a handshake and a photo op. But while he showed an acute understanding of his people and his desired place in their history, tonight, even with Ghosh and others pressing him, there was little straight talk about Imran Khan’s strategies to fix Pakistan.

June 12, 2011

Food writing was almost unavoidable for Carla Spartos, the New York Post's food writer and editor. Her father was a restaurateur in New York--serving classic continental dishes to the masses like steaks, chops and everyday Italian fare. Spartos spent her hours after school sipping Shirley Temples and eyeing the kitchen's cook line. And as a precocious middle-schooler, she even wrote an expose on cafeteria meat. Spartos left her mark at the Village Voice, Zagat and New York Magazine. Now, at the New York Post, Spartos covers every aspect of the food and restaurant industry. In 2009 she made some major waves in the food world with an editorial calling out snobbery in the modern food movement. SAJAForum's Shefali Kulkarni checked in with Spartos ahead of this year's SAJA convention, where she will speak about how she turned her love of food into a career.

SK: How did you land at the New York Post writing about what you love?

CS: It was sort of a long path. I grew up in restaurants, my dad was a restaurateur so basically every day after school I would hang out in the restaurant kitchen watching the line. After that, I studied at Cornell and originally I thought I might go into science writing, but my first job out of college was at the Village Voice. When I started at the Voice I was covering music and night life and I used to review bars -- that was a pretty great job for someone in their 20s. And then I segweyed into the food aspect. I worked as a web producer for New York Magazine, and I was doing some food articles there and then later at Zagat I was an editor.

It’s funny I wrote these articles for the seventh grade -- an expose on the cafeteria food. There was a quote that ran with it, something like: ‘Today’s hamburger could be tomorrow’s taco’ and it was about how the cafeteria would recycle food. I think there was always something [about food writing] in the back of my mind -- it was a passion, and it was just a matter of working my way into that role eventually.

SK: Talk a little about the 2009 editorial in the New York Post and some of the reactions that came from that.

CS: I think if we elicit some strong reactions with what we do, then we’ve done our job. If everyone says "Oh that’s what I’ve been thinking," then what are you adding to the dialogue? I do think someone who is cookin at home using a bag of salad or maybe frozen carrots -- I think that also should be encouraged. What’s the alternative? Maybe they would be eating at McDonald’s. It was also poking a bit of fun at the snobbery that’s maybe a little inherent sometimes.

SK: Where is food writing’s place in today’s media? With lots of food blogs out there, do you see that helping or hurting quality food writing? Is everyone a food critic now?

CS: I think it’s great. I’m an avid food blog reader, I love combing and reading through people’s opinions whether it’s Yelp or City Search or Menu Pages. I just find it interesting and you have to take everything with a grain of salt of course. But ultimately it's a good thing, the more voices you have out there.

SK: What advice would you recommend to young food writers?

CS: The industry itself has gotten a lot tougher to break into over the last say decade. I’m on the [SAJA Convention] panel called "Dream Jobs" and it’s just highly competitive now. Food is now being treated the way music or rock and roll is in a way.

My advice would be to do an internship. I think the other helpful thing is that since blogs are so ubiquitous, it’s great to start your own, so you can already have a body of work all ready to show someone your passion. And try to eat as much and as often as possible or what your budget allows -- try to have your own point of view.

“I was completely directionless,” Rabia Mehmood, a Pakistani journalist says reminiscing about her undergraduate college days. “At the most, I thought I’d end up teaching English Literature somewhere.”

But much has changed since then.

What followed was a Master's in Mass Communication from a college in Lahore and then, a stimulating career as a broadcast journalist with Express 24/7, an English Pakistani TV channel after grad school in 2007.

“Since I come from a simple Punjabi family, pursuing a Master's in Mass Communication was unheard of in my family,” she says.

Having reported on significant socio-political events in the country, such as the state of emergency (declared by ex-President Musharraf in 2007), the lawyer’s movement for the restoration of the judiciary in Pakistan (in 2009), bomb blasts, etc, Mehmood stands as a role model for many young Pakistani women hoping to make a name for themselves in the field of broadcast journalism in the country.

At Express, Mehmood was offered to be an anchor for the organization’s Urdu channel but she turned the offer down. “I wanted to learn the craft first,” she says, “I wanted to learn production.”

November 15, 2010

On Friday, Oct. 29, 2010, SAJA hosted a Newsmaker Conversation with Shashi Tharoor at Columbia Journalism School attended by more than 200 people from all over the city. The conversation was moderated by SAJA Board member and freelance writer Aseem Chhabra (@chhabs).

Tharoor, a long-time New Yorker and frequent SAJA speaker, is a member of India's Parliament and former minister; author of 12 books; former Under-Secretary General, United Nations. More on him at http://tharoor.in * his Twitter feed is @ShashiTharoor (he has the largest Twitter following in India)

In this rare return visit to NYC, he discussed his experiences in government, his take onIndo-US relations, his writing career and much more... You can see a video clip below, along with audio clips of the entire conversation.

Tharoor part 1_110210Shashi Tharoor discusses his career at the United Nations. He also talks about India's role in the US-led war in the Middle East.

Tharoor part 2_110210Shashi discusses how a strong relationship with the US serves India's pragmatic interests. He also speaks frankly about the experience of running as a politician in Kerala.

Tharoor part 3_110210Since becoming a member of parliament in India, Shashi offers a light-hearted account of the difficult lessons he learned along the way, including the infamous "cattle class" statement that drew him national attention. Finally, we hear about why he is tweeting less these days.

Tharoor part 4_110210Shashi talks about what it takes to be a successful politician in India, and some of his side projects.

A view of the Joseph Pulitzer World Room at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.

August 27, 2010

Editor's note: Omar Kasrawi is a freelance journalist and a production assistant on "Fareed Zakaria GPS." SAJAforum asked him to chat with his boss (and one of our most influential members) for us. Please post your comments below.

Earlier this month, a small reception was held to honor Zakaria for receiving the award. Indian Ambassador to the United States Meera Shankar made the journey up from D.C and explained to the crowd what the award means. (Her full remarks can be found here as a PDF)

I had the chance to speak with Zakaria recently on what this recognition means to him, his move to Time and more.

First of all, congratulations on receiving
the Padma Bhushan.

You’ve been called a lot of things in the
press. An academic, journalist, foreign affairs analyst, a future candidate for Secretary of State and so forth. The night you were honored for receiving the award you joked,
quoting Churchill, that from now on, “Your Excellency will do.”But you seemed genuinely humbled, if
not embarrassed, at the attention bestowed upon you that evening. What does
this award mean to you?

Fareed Zakaria: Well for me
it’s sort of humbling because my father was a politician in India, so I grew up
quite aware of this award. Quite aware of the enormous debates that used to
take place about who should get it. Whether or not it was appropriate for
somebody to get it. And I always assumed my father would get it, and in one of
the strange ironies of life was that he ended up, for the last ten years of his
life, being on the panel that determines who gets these awards.

So he was
automatically ruled out because of the conflict of interest. I think that I
have sort of mixed feelings about it. Honestly there’s a part of me that feels
like that Grouch Marx line, “I don’t want to be a member of any club that would
have me as a member.” And so I feel like it can’t be that important of an award
if they give it to me.

July 24, 2010

Editor's
Note: At this year's SAJA Gala Awards &
Scholarship Dinner, three of the most senior South Asian Journalists in
the United States were asked to appear on a panel called "View from the
Top". Two of them - Madhulika
Sikka, executive producer of NPR's Morning Edition; and Raju
Narisetti, managing editor of the Washington Post - are winners of
this year's SAJA Journalism Leader Award, given for outstanding
leadership. The third speaker, Jai
Singh, won the SAJA Journalism Leader
Award, in 2003, along with Rena Golden, then head of CNN International;
and the late Peter Jennings.

SAJAforum
student bloggers talked to the SAJA Gala Dinner panelists ahead of the
event. Here are excerpts from the interview with Raju Narisetti. Read
the
ones with Singh
here and Sikka here.

Interview by Shanti Venkataraman.

Raju
Narisetti is a journalist who frequently makes news himself.

In 2006, the veteran The Wall Street Journal editor decided to move to India to launch a business
newspaper in a highly competitive market that already had four flourishing
business dailies. In 2008, he made news again when he returned to the U.S. as the managing editor of The Washington Post.

Ahead of
the SAJA Gala on July 24, 2010, Raju Narisetti offered us his view from the
top. Here are excerpts from an interview with SAJA Forum blogger Shanthi Venkataraman:

How is it
to be back in the US, after your experience of launching Mint in
India? Has your perspective of journalism, and the news we cover, changed?

The three years
I spent in India were actually that of real adjustment after spending 20 years in
American journalism. If I had to do it all over again, I would do it in a
heartbeat. You can spend a lifetime here and never get the chance to launch
something new and see it grow well. It was immensely satisfying experience, and
Mint continues to do well. Just this month, it launched another edition in
Ahmedabad, India. And it just broke even, three years after its launch and that, too, in
a global recession. For it to be recognized as a paper with quality, ethics and
analysis – that accomplishes everything that I set out to do.

What
was your experience with the media industry there?

Obviously
the industry was completely different. It is a dynamic industry. Unlike here
circulation and advertising there is growing in the double digits. The business
side of the media is doing really well. On the journalism end of it: multiple
choices have not necessarily led to a substantial increase in quality of
journalism. The industry is in a transition phase, though and Mint is evidence
that quality journalism and analysis has value.

December 13, 2009

Congressional candidateDr. Manan Trivedi seems to have a suspiciously fine-tuned resume: not only is he a war veteran in a nation at war, but a physician and health care policy wonk to boot. He's running for Congress in the 6th district of Pennsylvania. SAJA blogger Zeeshan Aleem spoke with him by phone about identity politics, serving in Iraq, and his mother's work for the Obama campaign.

Tell us about the history the your district you’re running in, and why you think a Democrat will be able to win it even though it's elected a Republican Congressman for the past four terms.

The district is a Democratic-leaning district -- it has at least 20,000 more Democrats registered than Republicans. The incumbent built up a moderate Republican base, and was a fairly decent campaigner, and would win by the skin of his teeth every year. He had some name recognition, and that’s why he won in a democratic district. Now he’s gone; he’s not running again.

It’s an open seat, and most pundits predict that this is going to go to the Democratic nominee. The shifting demographics of this district has a lot of younger, more progressive people moving in from the Philly region, the demographics are shifting more toward the blue side -- as is the entire north east

We are a nation at war, and we are a nation with an ailing health care system. You have served in the military, and you are a doctor. It’s likely that you have an intuitive grasp of two of the most important – and visceral – issues that dominate the American political landscape.

I do feel I have a unique perspective on these two very pressing issues. Health care is something I’ve worked on passionately for the past 15 years, my entire professional career. And I am very much in favor of this health care reform legislation. Regardless of what happens with this attempt at reform, this is just the first step – we need to continue to fight to get a truly efficient, high quality, low-cost health care system in America …

I served in Iraq with the marines as part of the very first ground forces to enter Iraq in 2003; that experience was quite formative for me. I learned a lot about myself, a lot about my country, and a lot about what it really means to go to war. That experience made me determined that we need people in Congress to assure that we never take that decision lightly again, which I think we need in 2002-3, when we made the decision to go to war in Iraq. I don’t think we went in with the right incentives, we definitely didn’t go in with the right armor, and we didn’t go in there with the right intelligence either.

July 11, 2009

EDITOR'S NOTE: In celebration of SAJA's 15th anniversary, we talked to senior journalists who have been with the organization since its early days. In these profiles, they share a bit of themselves and their association with SAJA.

Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian, was always a journalist. As a 12-year old, he published his own neighborhood paper with stories about what kids in the neighborhood were upto. Bhatia worked at student papers while in school and college.

“The public service aspect of [journalism] really appealed to me,” he said.

And this he says doesn't change. Bhatia sees a role for newspaper even in the face of increasing pessimism about the fate of print media.

“We now have the opportunity to do different things, infinite space to display work on the Web,” he said. “It expands the portfolio of what we can offer. A well-written story on print still has currency and audience.”

Bhatia has been with SAJA since the organization's inception.

“SAJA opens up a broad world of really interesting and talented people,” he said. “It’s made it possible to have broader discussions rooted in some common heritage and allowed me to interact with some very smart people and expanded my view of what journalism can be.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: In celebration of SAJA's 15th anniversary, we talked to senior journalists who have been with the organization since its early days. In these profiles, they share a bit of themselves and their association with SAJA.

Thalif Deen, the former U.N. Bureau Chief and Regional Directorof Inter Press Service News Agency, says as a Sri Lankan journalist he is now an “endangered species.”

Over the years, Deen says that SAJA has kept South Asian reporters in North America abreast of news from the other side of the world, including the struggles of journalists in other parts of the world.

“I have always appreciated the services provided by SAJA,” he said. He specifically mentioned Sree Sreenivasan, one of the group's founders, and his role in keeping the member community alerted to breaking news from the South Asian region.

Deen was among the first members of SAJA 15 years ago. He also served on SAJA's executive committee, and was one of the first Sri Lankan journalists to join the organization.

July 08, 2009

EDITOR'S NOTE: In celebration of SAJA's 15th anniversary, we talked to senior journalists who have been with the organization since its early days. In these profiles, they share a bit of themselves and their association with SAJA. For the first profile, SAJA Blogger Sweta Vohra talked to New York-based photojournalist Jay Mandal.

Perhaps a bike and a passion for people is what you
need to become a well-respected journalist. At the age of
17, Jay Mandal began exploring and communicating his view of the world with just his bike and amateur Kodak camera as his tools. Today, Mandal is a well-known
photojournalist based in New York, who covers events all over the globe.
While his equipment may have changed over the years he says, “my life’s
passion has remained the same – I am an explorer and I tell stories.”

Mandal joined SAJA just two months after its inception. Over the years SAJA has become a force in the media world, and is a reflection of the influence India and Indians have on international issues. Mandal, a frequent contributor to SAJA Forum, recently was attacked when on assignment in India by Trinamul Congress activists in
Nandigram. Mandal says that the support he received after the attack from SAJA members was
overwhelming. (For excerpts from an interview with Mandal about the attack, please go to http://www.sajaforum.org/2009/05/indian-elections-new-york-photographer-jay-mandal-beaten-by-political-mob.html)

Mandal, a native of West Bengal, says
there was no script for his career path. His advise to young journalists is that one learns the most from experiences, not necessarily
from fancy university degrees.

As for the future,
Mandal says that while he is an “old man with 384,000 kilometers on a bicycle”,
his work is only half done. Perhaps, another few thousand miles
won’t hurt.